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Account Access
Overview
Account Access solutions provide customers around-the-clock access to their account information. They also allow users to inquire, update and delete information on their individual accounts. There are many applications that fall under this category of solutions, ranging from trading applications provided by online brokerages to account manager functions provided by utilities such as telephone companies. This category of solutions also includes account access applications provided by banks, credit card companies and insurance companies.
Account Access as a Composite Pattern
As shown in the figure above, the Composite pattern for an Account Access solution consists of:
- An Access Integration pattern that provides a unified mechanism to implement single sign-on capabilities. This pattern is also used to provide a personalized experience to the account holder.
- A Self-Service business pattern which provides access to information stored in core business systems and databases
- The solution may optionally include an Information Aggregation pattern in cases where information from multiple accounts is summarized to provide a single unified portfolio view to the customer.
- The solution can also include the Collaboration business pattern as functions such as online chat with a customer service representative and help desk support are added to it.
- If the solution has any one of the optional Business patterns the solution may optionally include an Application Integration pattern to seamlessly combine multiple Business patterns.
What's Next
The Account Access composite pattern is a new and emerging pattern, and is not documented beyond this introductory level. Revisit the Patterns web site home page to see when new updates have been applied.
Return to the Business patterns Main page to review the Patterns for e-business offerings.
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New Account Access composite pattern
The Account Access composite pattern has been added to the Patterns for e-business Web site as part of a set of updates corresponding to the release of Patterns for e-business: A Strategy for Reuse, a new book by the Patterns architects that documents both established and emerging e-business infrastructures.
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Feasibility: This material will help you determine the high-level shape of an Account Access system, and ensure your approach looks similar to other successful sites. Re-use of prior approaches can be an effective way to begin most major projects. Obviously, modifications will be needed for any unique requirements of a given site. This pattern provides a drill-down from high-level architecture to lower-level designs and guidance.
Risk: Basing new projects on prior designs and ideas helps to lower the risk of failure. Creating or inventing designs for each project tends to result in a lower success rate. Frequently, projects begun "from scratch" simply do not work and have major exposures in such areas as security, performance, availability, undefined requirements, and cost over-run.
Cost-benefit: By starting with reasonably complete architectures you save considerable development time and obtain assurance that the end solution will have a much higher chance of success. Actual savings will vary, but project teams have realized a 10% to 50% reduction of work effort in their design and architecture phases alone.
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